The subject matter described and/or illustrated herein relates generally to electrical connector systems and, more particularly, to electrical connectors that are mounted on circuit boards.
To meet digital multi-media demands, higher data throughput is often desired for current digital communications equipment. Electrical connectors that interconnect circuit boards must therefore handle ever increasing signal speeds at ever increasing signal densities. One application environment that uses such electrical connectors is in high speed, differential electrical connectors, such as those common in the telecommunications or computing environments. In a traditional approach, two circuit boards are interconnected with one another in a backplane and a daughter board configuration. However, at the footprints of the circuit boards where the electrical connectors connect thereto it may be difficult to improve density while maintaining electrical performance and/or reasonable manufacturing cost. For example, in known circuit boards, one primary source of electrical degradation comes from the existence of signal vias within the circuit boards that are plated, creating plated through holes (PTHs). Contacts extending from the electrical connectors are connected to the PTHs, and thus traces in the circuit board, using eye-of-the-needle contacts.
To overcome electrical degradation problems associated with the PTHs, at least some known systems counterbore portions of the PTHs away to remove the plating to an area just in the vicinity of the corresponding trace in the circuit board. However, such systems are not without disadvantages. For example, the contacts that mate to the PTHs can still extend beyond the PTHs. Such portions of the contacts create significant electrical degradation due to the parasitic capacitance that is created by any piece of ‘stub’ metal that extends beyond the printed circuit board (PCB) target layer. The problems with the contacts are particularly exaggerated when the PTHs are at the upper layers of the circuit board, where the contacts extend for significant distances below the PCB target layer. The problems with the contacts are particularly exaggerated when the PTHs are at the upper layers of the circuit board, where the contacts extend for significant distances below the PCB target layer.
To achieve higher system densities and speed, further improvement of circuit board footprints and connections to the circuit boards must be made over known approaches. There is a need for an electrical connector that enables improvement of the density and/or electrical performance of circuit board footprints to achieve higher system densities and/or higher system speeds.